Half 2
In Half 1, I talked in regards to the poly-crises humanity is dealing with. I described Jeremy Rifkin’s new ebook, Planet Aqua: Rethinking Our Residence within the Universe and the way it expands the understanding of our world to acknowledge that our planet is primarily water relatively than earth. I additionally mentioned the work of James DeMeo who traced the origins of a lot of our present issues to a specific time and place in human historical past–6,000 years in the past within the Center East–and what it could educate us about our current predicament and methods to resolve it.
For many of human historical past, regardless of the various challenges of life, people lived in relative peace and prosperity. Of their ebook, Nurturing Our Humanity: How Domination and Partnership Form Our Brains, Lives, and Future, Riane Eisler and Douglas P. Fry, they are saying,
“For the overwhelming majority of the interval that the genus Homo has existed, nomadic foraging constituted the ever-present human life-style.”
They go on quote anthropologist M.G. Bicchieri who mentioned,
“For greater than 99 % of the roughly two million years because the emergence of recognizable human animal, man has been a hunter and gatherer.”
Eisler and Fry say our ancestors have been “The Authentic Partnership Societies” with the next options of partnership techniques that embrace:
- Equality, respect, and partnership between ladies and men.
- A nonacceptance of violence, struggle, abuse, cruelty, and exploitation.
- Ethics that assist human caring, prosocial cooperation, and flourishing.
As James DeMeo’s analysis demonstrated, this lifestyle modified 6,000 years in the past.
“With only a few exceptions, there isn’t a clear and unambiguous proof for warfare or social violence on our planet Earth previous to round 4,000 BCE and the earliest proof seems in particular places, from which it firstly arose, and subtle outward over time to contaminate practically each nook of the globe.”
DeMeo goes on to say,
“An enormous local weather change shook the traditional world, when roughly 6,000 years in the past huge areas of lush grassland and forest within the Previous World started to shortly dry out and convert into harsh desert. The huge Sahara Desert, Arabian Desert, and the enormous deserts of the Center East and Central Asia merely didn’t exist previous to c.4000 BCE.”
There may be trendy proof that the world in query is what had been referred to within the bible as “the Backyard of Eden.” Of their ebook, Exiles From Eden: Psychotherapy From an Evolutionary Perspective, Kalman Glantz and John Okay. Pearce cite the work of archaeologist Juris Zarins. He believes this idyllic space of the world now lies below the Persian Gulf, downstream from the traditional civilizations that flowed alongside the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates. In line with Glantz and Pearce
“Eden was not paradise. It was only a place—a spot the place human beings lived the way in which all people lived earlier than the rise of civilization.”
“The ‘Backyard of Eden’ myths, which exist within the historic literature of many Previous World cultures, look like factually rooted on this early interval of socially-cooperative and peaceable social situations, when the Saharasia was inexperienced and fruitful,”
says DeMeo.
“Then got here the devastating local weather change in direction of aridity, which shaped the huge Saharasian desert belt, and people have been actually forged ‘out of the backyard’. The remaining is historical past.”
DeMeo’s analysis exhibits that the drought that occurred 6,000 years went on for generations and impacted the lives of all who lived at the moment. Latest analysis on the affect of “Hostile Childhood Experiences,” demonstrates that the results of childhood trauma are lengthy lasting and trigger bodily, emotional, and relational well being issues all through our lives.
“Famine and hunger is a extreme trauma from which survivors hardly ever escape unscathed,”
says DeMeo.
“Lots of people die, households are break up aside, and infants and kids are sometimes deserted, and undergo enormously. Hunger impacts surviving youngsters in an emotionally extreme method. These attitudes and behaviors are deeply protoplasmic in nature, and are handed on to ensuing generations it doesn’t matter what the local weather, by social establishments which replicate the character construction of the common particular person at any given time frame.”
Though this sort of trauma impacts each men and women, women and men typically take care of the trauma in numerous methods. The comic, Elayne Boosler, affords a humorous, but insightful reflection on this inherent distinction. She says,
“When ladies get depressed they both eat or buy groceries. Males invade one other nation. It’s a complete completely different mind-set.”
In my latest ebook, Lengthy Stay Males! The Moonshot Mission to Heal Males, Shut the Lifespan Hole, and Supply Hope to Humanity, my second chapter is titled, “Male Violence is Growing—From College Shootings, to Home Violence and Riot on the US Capitol. From Irritability and Anger to Despair and Suicide.”
I’m going on to say,
“Males are the ‘canaries within the coal mine,’ alerting us to the necessity for change. Canaries have been utilized in aim mines as an early warning system for miners. Poisonous gases corresponding to carbon monoxide and methane within the mine would kill the chicken earlier than affecting the miners. Male psychological sickness and breakdown are the world’s early warning indicators of impending disaster. Issues like Irritable Male Syndrome, male despair and aggression, and excessive suicide charges are alerting us to the poisonous nature of our present surroundings and existence.”
Our Moonshot For Mankind and Humanity
We imagine man’s psychological, emotional, and relational well being is the important thing to empowering males to stay lengthy and effectively. Our mission is to assist males stay more healthy, happier, extra cooperative lives—fulfilling lives of goal and productiveness, the place males are supported and valued as they make optimistic contributions to their households, pals, and communities. When that occurs, households develop stronger, communities prosper, and humanity takes its subsequent leap ahead.
In 2004 I learn a robust examine, “Sexual Choice and the Male:Feminine Mortality Ratio,” by Daniel J. Kruger, PhD and Randolph M. Nesse, M.D. They examined untimely deaths amongst males in 20 nations. They discovered that in each nation, males died sooner and lived sicker than ladies and their shortened health-span and lifespan harmed the lads and their households. They concluded with quite a few highly effective statements:
- “Being male is now the only largest demographic issue for early loss of life.”
- “Over 375,000 lives can be saved in a single yr within the U.S. alone if males’s threat of dying was as little as ladies’s.”
- “If male mortality charges might be decreased to these for females, this may eradicate over one-third of all male deaths under age 50 and assist males of all ages.”
- “If you happen to may make male mortality charges the identical as feminine charges, you’d do extra good than curing most cancers.”
For me, this was a name to motion. I invited quite a few colleagues who have been main organizations that had confirmed profitable in serving to enhance males’s well being. We launched the non-profit, MoonshotForMankind.Org. We invite you to hitch us.
We even have an extra approach to share data that may be useful. Come take a look at our Substack, https://substack.com/@moonshotformankind and listen to what our founding members should say.
There are clearly quite a few biologically based mostly the explanation why ladies stay longer than males. However we all know that even our genes could be modified by modifications in our life-style and beliefs about ourselves and the world.
The teachings I’ve realized over time are these:
- We is probably not liable for the traumatic local weather change that occurred 6,000 years in the past, however we should take duty for our current scenario. As they are saying, “Nature bats final.” If people should not prepared to alter, nature will drive the change upon us.
- We might do effectively to take heed to our animal elders. Most species have been right here longer than us and are higher tailored to life on planet Earth. As historian Thomas Berry reminds us.
“We by no means knew sufficient. Nor have been we sufficiently intimate with all our cousins within the nice household of the earth. Nor may we take heed to the varied creatures of the earth, every telling its personal story. The time has now come, nevertheless, once we will pay attention or we are going to die.”
- Once we’re happening the fallacious highway, it’s by no means too late to show round.
- We might not be capable to flip again to the previous, however we will transfer forward to the longer term. As Jeremy Rifkin says,
“We have to reset our notion of waters as ‘useful resource’ to 1 the place waters are seen as a ‘life supply.’ We have to adapt to the hydrosphere relatively than attempting to adapt the hydrosphere to us. The subsequent stage within the human saga is to rebrand our residence ‘Planet Aqua’ and study to stay and thrive in new methods on a novel water planet within the universe.”
You’ll be able to study extra about Jeremy Rifkin’s work and his ebook, Planet Aqua: Rethinking Our Residence within the Universe right here. If you happen to appreciated this collection of articles and wish to learn extra about how we will create a wholesome future for ourselves, our youngsters, and future generations, I invite you to enroll in my free weekly publication. You are able to do so right here: https://menalive.com/email-newsletter/
